I Truly Hate Myself

Night had long fallen by the time Yuna left the old apartment.

She immediately drove toward Joe's apartment.

Joe answered the door, dressed in a set of loungewear. He was startled by how lost she looked. "Yuna? Why are you here?"

She stood there, stammering for a long time with quivering lips before she finally forced out her words. "Finn's parents are dead..."

Joe's hand, which was holding a glass of wine, froze mid-air.

He placed it down and walked over to wrap an arm around her shoulders. "Come in. Tell me everything."

Yuna was in a state of complete disbelief as she was guided to sit on the couch, murmuring blankly, "My assistant looked into it. There were medical records, death certificates, and storage records from the crematorium."

She looked up at him with red eyes. "Joe, they're actually gone. Finn's father died five years ago, and his mother died three more days later."

I watched as Joe's face turned stiff for a few long moments.

Then, he knelt down and held her hand with his, gently stroking the back of it with a thumb. "Yuna, it's not your fault."

"But..."

"No buts," he said, interrupting her. "You didn't know this would happen, right? No one would've foreseen such a tragedy.

"If anyone is to blame, then it has to be me. If I didn't need Finn's help with the case back then, you wouldn't have gotten into such a terrible spat with him. If none of that had happened, you wouldn't have lost the chance to see them one final time."

Then, Joe put on the wounded look, pinning the blame on himself to gain her sympathy. Surprise, surprise. It worked like a charm.

"Don't say that, Joe!"

"I'm telling the truth. You've done more than enough for me over the years, Yuna. Once this election is done, I'll personally visit his parents' graves and apologize."

Tears continued to stream down Yuna's cheeks. She held tight to his hands like he was her last shred of hope. "What about Finn? His parents are dead. How do we find him now?"

Joe thought for a moment before speaking in a softer voice than before. "Think about it, Yuna. If Finn is truly dead, who would have organized his parents' funerals? Why has no one collected their ashes for five years?"

Yuna was surprised. "You mean to say..."

"I just find it suspicious. You know how Finn is. He may look like an honest man, but he's the greatest schemer ever. Back then, he only agreed to take the blame for me because he knew you would think well of him."

He turned away from her, a bitter smile painting his lips. "Sometimes, I truly hate myself. Yuna, you wouldn't have been forced to marry him if I had returned sooner."

"Don't say that, Joe!" She walked over and wrapped her arms around him. "I was a blind fool back then. Don't worry. It doesn't matter whether he's dead or alive. I swear I'll make sure to support you through this crisis!"

As I watched the two cling to each other, a chill spread through my translucent form.

What a loving couple.

They loved each other so much that they would scheme to make the victim of their malicious plots forgive them.

My abusers were delusional and totally sick in the head.

Missed Calls Years Ago

Yuna stayed in Joe's apartment until midnight.

The moment she left, the gentle and warm look on his face vanished.

He returned to the couch and dialed a number with a scowl on his face. "Hey, it's me. Just where did Finn go? Yuna found out that his parents are dead. Now, she's searching everywhere for him like a madwoman."

Whatever the person on the other end said only made Joe more impatient.

"I don't care where he's hiding! Find him! There's one more month left to the election. If no one takes the blame for that case, the federal officers will come after me first!"

After a pause, he smirked.

"He wants to fake his death? If he had the nerve to do so, he wouldn't have taken the fall for me back then. He's an absolute loser, and losers value their lives the most. He wouldn't die."

After ending the call, he slammed his phone back on the coffee table. Then, he took a swig of wine.

I drifted before him, observing the frustrated and scheming look in his eyes.

Suddenly, I found it all laughable.

He thought I had hidden away, so he knew nothing at all.

It was another sleepless night for Yuna.

…

The very next morning, she summoned her assistant to her office. "I want every record from the day Finn was released from prison. Who picked him up, where he went, who he met—leave nothing out."

Her assistant was surprised. "Ms. Lane, didn't I…"

"Keep looking into it. Dig deeper."

Too scared to ask any further, the assistant left the office.

…

That afternoon, a stack of documents was left on Yuna's desk.

The first page she flipped to was the discharge records from the prison.

My name was sloppily scrawled across it.

The second page was a still image from the prison entrance's surveillance records.

In it, I was standing right outside the metal grates, squinting up at the sky while dressed in the same outfit I was imprisoned in three years ago.

The person who picked me up was not Joe's driver but a middle-aged woman with gray hair.

Yuna pointed at the image. "Who is that?"

"The mother of the fraud case's victim, Serena Zodd. Her son committed suicide after being cheated out of over two million back then.

"She raised her grandson all alone until he was diagnosed with leukemia at five. As there was no money to treat him, he passed away too."

She flinched. "She picked up Finn?"

"The surveillance record shows Mr. Chance talking to her for a few moments before they got into a gray van."

The assistant held out a photograph.

The van was parked by the side of the road. The word "Logistics" was printed on its side, and its rearview mirror was held together by some tape.

"That van got onto the Hillside Express that afternoon. This was the last photo we have of it."

The assistant flipped to the next still from the surveillance cameras. In it, the gray van was speeding down the expressway. The driver's face could not be seen.

Yuna's frown deepened. "What next?"

"There was nothing after that. Two hours later, someone reported a car crash near the mountain. By the time the firefighters arrived at the scene, the van was completely consumed by the fire."

The office was so silent that the only sound heard was the buzzing of the air conditioning.

"Oh, right. I've found the police's report of the incident." The assistant pulled out the last document of the stack. "They concluded that the driver lost control as the brakes stopped working. There were only two individuals in the car. Finn died on the spot, while Serene was left heavily injured."

Yuna did not say a single word. She stared at the documents and photos spread across her desk, motionless, as if she had been turned to stone.

…

After a few long moments, she violently shot to her feet. Her lips trembled, opening and closing, but no sound came out for ages.

"That's impossible… No way! How can Finn be dead? If he's dead, why wasn't his family notified?"

"The police did look up his profile. You were listed as his spouse. According to the report…"

The assistant glanced at her before continuing on in a lower voice. "They said they called you multiple times, but no one answered."

Yuna was stunned.

She frantically rummaged for her phone. However, the call records from five years ago had already been erased.

Still, she remembered that time full well.

Joe needed more money and connections back then.

She was so busy networking on his behalf to counter the federal office's investigation into the fraud case.

Her phone was in Joe's service every hour of the day. She never answered any calls that came from unknown numbers.

Back then, she thought the calls came from scammers or marketing firms.

She had thought of a million different possibilities, except for the chance that I was dead.

At that thought, Yuna slowly crouched down. With her back against her desk, she wrapped her arms around her knees.

She did not cry.

Instead, she curled up in silence, like a snail that had its shell shattered by a cruel stomp.

After a long time, she finally spoke with a hoarse voice.

"Does Joe know about this?"

The assistant shook her head. "Mr. Farrell shouldn't know about it. According to the information we found, there were no traces of his knowledge of the crash."

Yuna buried her face in her knees.

After another few long moments, she finally replied, "Keep digging. Find out how Serena knew when Finn would be discharged from prison."

She raised her head up. Her eyes were bloodshot. "Only Joe and I know the date of his discharge."

The assistant's face twisted in shock.